


Your Naked Name

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:20:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23626795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Trevelyan isn't sure what he and Dorian are to each other. Lovers? Paramours?Even if he picked one, would Dorian agree?
Relationships: Dorian Pavus/Male Trevelyan, Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus
Comments: 6
Kudos: 95





	Your Naked Name

Dorian was a loud kisser, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the echoing silence of Skyhold’s library. Every little growl and moan carried around the curved walls of the rotunda, so that there was no doubt in Trevelyan’s mind that every person in the vicinity knew exactly what was happening between the stacks.

Not that he cared. He wrapped his arms tight around Dorian’s waist, the world narrowing to the warmth of their bodies and the taste of each other’s mouths. Trevelyan was hard, but non-committedly so. The thought of kissing like this for hours had more appeal than raw lust, and his mind grew blurry with pleasure as Dorian slid a hand up his neck to cradle the back of his head.

Their hips bumped a table, and something heavy and metal clattered to the floor. Trevelyan pulled back and saw the Pavus family birthright on the floor.

“It’s not fragile, is it?” asked Trevelyan.

“No,” said Dorian, steering Trevelyan’s face back to his. “Unless you’re speaking metaphorically.”

Trevelyan’s answer was swallowed by soft lips. He had come up here to return the amulet and apologize for meddling, and somehow it had escalated to this. It was a little frightening to think how quickly his feelings for this man had taken root, especially when they often misunderstood each other so badly.

He thought back to the argument in Val Royeaux. Dorian’s displeasure at Trevelyan going behind his back was understandable, if frustrating. Less understandable had been the dark way Dorian had said, “never mind what he is,” when Trevelyan had signaled him to be silent and not rise to Ponchard’s bait. It had probably meant nothing, had simply been a sullen response to being toyed with, but it did raise a question.

“Dorian,” murmured Trevelyan.

“Mmm.”

“When we were—” Trevelyan pulled back, only to be inhaled again. “—haggling with Ponchad—”

“Don’t bring up that toad,” groaned Dorian.

“I just meant—” Trevelyan gently pushed him away. “When you said, ‘he’s not my friend, he’s—’ what were you going to say?”

Dorian's mustache was a mess and his pupils were blown. “Before you chastised me in public like a child?”

“Before I warned you not to play his game,” said Trevelyan. “What were you going to call me? I mean, what exactly do you think of me as?”

Dorian wiped a hand across his mouth, blinking hard like a man who had been rudely woken from a dream. “Does it really matter?”

“Yes,” said Trevelyan. “If someone asks, will you say that I’m your…”

Dorian’s face went perfectly blank. Trevelyan felt panic creep into his chest.

Everything had moved so quickly between them. Dorian had grown from a spoiled brat who never failed to test Trevelyan’s patience, to the person he thought of first when he heard a good joke. They were friends, true friends, and had flirted with each other competitively, and then sincerely for almost a year. Touching each other, kissing each other, all that was new, but the spark wasn’t. They hadn’t slept together, though it felt inevitable at this point, and a natural outgrowth of everything that had come before it.

Trevelyan suddenly had a swooping dread that he had misread the situation entirely. Was it possible Dorian considered this just an elaborate tryst—an arrangement of pleasurable convenience? In asking for a label, had he just revealed the depths of his own desire in a way that was incongruous with what the man in front of him was feeling?

“Nevermind. Don’t worry about it,” said Trevelyan.

“Ah,” said Dorian, his eyes hooding again. “Good.”

And they spoke no more after that.

* * *

There was little time for kissing over the next few weeks. There were Red Templars in a place called the Emerald Graves, and the Inquisitor rode out with his company with the usual embarrassing fanfare, trumpets et all.

Trevelyan took Dorian, Sera, and Vivienne with him, which turned out to be a mistake. Sera spent the entire trip trying to pull a prank on Vivienne and, when she inevitably failed, took her frustration out on the rest of the camp by putting bronto dung in their boots. Dorian and Vivienne, usually hard workers on their own, refused to do chores around camp when they were around each other, and instead spent their time criticizing every Inquisition soldier unlucky enough to cross their path, including him.

“You would think a man tasked with striking terror in the hearts of god-kings would realize wearing black is not intimidating, just depressing,” said Vivienne, on their way to a rift one morning.

“Believe me, I have tried to get him to expand his wardrobe, but it’s like telling a crow to change its feathers,” said Dorian. “Black boots, black trousers, black coat, black shirts. I spotted a red sash in his dresser one morning and almost fainted.”

“You’d think we were headed to a funeral,” said Vivienne.

Trevelyan cut a sprig of elfroot with his knife and tucked it into his satchel. “If I had known I had two fashion ministers in my entourage, I would have left one of you at home.”

“And miss all this?” said Dorian. “Giants, Red Templars, _insects_.”

“You two would not last five minutes in a Denerim outhouse,” said Sera, kicking mushrooms over with her oversized boots.

“And you would be served on a platter if you showed up at the Winter Palace with mustard stains on your….I won’t even call that a blouse," said Vivienne.

Sera stuck her tongue out. She caught Trevelyan by the arm, tugging him further down the path. Trevelyan glanced back, only to catch Dorian’s fond smile, and an ache of longing lanced through him.

He had been trying to get Dorian alone in his tent just once on the road, to no avail. There was always some paperwork to finish, some meeting with a quartermaster, some detail that required his attention deep into the night. He and Dorian had travelled together in the field many times before, but this was the first time Trevelyan could remember being this frustrated.

And under the desire was the fear from the library: what if he was wrong?

"You're moony." There was a knowing lilt in Sera's tone. "He not giving it to you hard enough?" 

"Not giving it at all," said Trevelyan. 

"Why? You got crickets?" 

"No." Trevelyan brushed her arm off. "We're just....dancing around each other, I suppose. I asked him a foolish question, and now he probably thinks I'm too eager, unless he doesn't, which means he's ashamed, and that's worse."

"Pfft. You two are worse than girls," said Sera. "What did you ask him?"

"What he calls me in his head. Am I a friend or something else?"

""Just get him in bed. Whatever he calls you when he's playing up-dog, that's what you are." 

"Yes, because no one ever shouted something they don't mean in bed. Wait, who says he's the up-dog?"

Sera raised an eyebrow.

Trevelyan ripped a leaf off a tree and crumpled it over Sera's head. She swatted it away. "I'm not that delicate."

"Are too."

Trevelyan was about to reply, when the air above their heads shimmered like broken glass.

Trevelyan shoved Sera away a second before the rift exploded. They had walked right into it.

“Move!” Demons poured out. Trevelyan fade-stepped through the first one he saw—a slavering fear demon—leaving a spray of ice in his wake.

He skidded to a halt beside Vivienne. She slung her staff out like a sword, a spectral blade emerging from its focus stone. She lunged at the nearest enemy—a smoldering rage demon. Dorian was slinging fireballs at the shrieking terror demons lumbering through the underbrush, while Sera pelted them with arrows.

Trevelyan knew his job.

He fade stepped back across the field, zigzagging between demons until he was directly under the rift. Crackling green light spewed from his palm, and he threw his hand up, seizing the tattered threads of the Veil and yanking them tight. The Anchor surged with heat, a rope of light connecting between it and the rift, the two roaring as they pushed and pulled against each other’s power.

This was the moment of greatest danger. He needed to give the Anchor time to seal the rift. Wind whipped off the rift and flattened the grass, the sounds of battle circling as if it was the eye of a hurricane. Trevelyan checked over his shoulder. Sera threw a bottle at a despair demon that burst into sticky flames. Dorian was shooting lightning at a terror demon, and Vivienne was beating the rage demon into submission.

“Want to trade?” Dorian called out to Trevelyan.

“I don’t know, think you’re man enough to handle the arm cramp?" shouted Trevelyan over the crackle of the rift.

“You’re right, best stick to the easy job—” The terror demon flared up and shrieked in his face. Dorian stumbled back, then zapped it again with lightning. 

“Come on.” Trevelyan gritted his teeth. The rift was shrinking. Its threads pulled together like a seam. He checked over his shoulder again. Dorian was spinning in place, searching. The terror demon had vanished, and that meant—

Trevelyan’s feet were ripped out from under him. He landed flat on his back, all the air knocked from his lungs. The terror demon burst out of the ground with a shriek. It towered over him, its dangling jowls dribbling acid, its many eyes turning down on him. He had a brief moment to appreciate that he was going to die without ever getting Dorian into bed.

Then the terror demon stabbed its claws into the warm viscera of his stomach.

* * *

“—don’t touch him!”

Light shimmered under Trevelyan’s eyelids. It was like the morning light that came through his bedroom window in Ostwick. The night fishermen would be bringing blue crabs and lobsters in creaking wagons under the gate. His brother would be leading his horse out of the stables, her hooves clopping on the cobblestones.

“If you don’t leave right now, I will scream for the Commander—”

He forced his eyelids open. They were heavy, and the light sent a knife of pain through his skull and down his neck. All he could make out were fuzzy shapes. Voices pitched and circled around his ears. Was he sick? Why couldn’t he hear the ocean?

“Scream for him, then,” snarled a male voice. “You can scream as I pitch you out the bloody window, you meddling harpy.”

Something glass broke, followed by the pounding of feet. “What in the Maker’s name is going on here?”

“Commander, this man, this mage—”

“I’m not leaving,” said the first male voice.

“Dorian,” the second man sighed. “I told you before, there’s nothing you can do for him.”

“I’m not leaving. Arrest me if you must, but I can assure you, you’ll have more than a few dead soldiers on your hands if you try.”

Trevelyan struggled. His mind knew those voices—not his brother, not his father, not even the Templar who took him away—but couldn’t find the names.

“I know, that…..” the second man hesitated. “I know that you and the Inquisitor are friends—”

There was a roar of magic. Heat washed over the bed, and a symphony of glass shattered on the floor.

“Friends? _Friends?_ ” The first man sounded slightly deranged. “I’m not his friend, I’m his lover, I’m his partner, I’m his. Not his friend, not his companion, not his favorite or whatever else you like to call people like us. I’m his, and he’s mine, and if you try to drag me from this room I swear, Cullen, it’ll be as a corpse.”

There was a long, long silence. “I understand. I’ll let the healers know.”

“Good. Now get out.”

Two sets of footsteps left. Someone sat down on the bed and held his hand. He struggled to wake, but there was a terrible pain spreading through his torso, and he was so, so tired.

The light faded, and as he drifted back down into slurry sleep, the hand squeezed his tightly.

* * *

Trevelyan woke up gasping for air. He sat up and immediately regretted it. Pain stabbed through his middle, and he wrapped an arm around himself, wincing as his guts gurgled ominously.

He was in his bed back at Skyhold.

“Damn it.” He shielded his eyes against the morning sun pouring through the windows. His head pounded, and his mouth tasted like an old boot. From the way his muscles ached, he had been lying in bed for a long time. The room stank of sickness and shit, as well as fainter traces of blood and bile. He tried to slide a foot onto the floor, and the shock of pain drove a whimper out of him and forced him to lie back down. He stared up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of how he had gotten here.

“Not dead, then,” he rasped.

Someone gasped. He turned his head, and saw Dorian sitting up on the sofa. Trevelyan could smell him from here, and the shock on his face told him everything he needed to know.

“How many days?’ asked Trevelyan.

“Twelve,” said Dorian. “Though it did take us eight to get you back here.”

That was….an unacceptable amount of time. There was no telling how far he had fallen behind in court politics. “Tell me I did not shit my pants in front of Vivienne.”

Dorian stood up slowly. He was looking at Trevelyan with that disbelieving wonder, as if he could not quite believe he was real. He touched his face, and Trevelyan was alarmed to see tears in his eyes.

“I’m not dead, Dorian,” he said, trying to laugh. It was a mistake. His stomach muscles bunched and instantly spasmed with pain. He curled up with a wince, and that turned out to be a mistake, too.

“Be still.” Dorian forced his shoulders flat on the bed. “You were very nearly disemboweled. You’re lucky Vivienne _was_ there to see you shit your pants, otherwise—” Dorian blinked hard. “What was it that Varric said about you? That you’re the luckiest unlucky bastard he’s ever met?”

“He left out the bastard part.” Trevelyan forced his body to relax. It would take many more weeks for him to recuperate even with the help of magic. Trevelyan felt a wave of strange shame. He had seen Dorian cry before, after the fallout with his father in Redcliffe, but never for him.

“Have you been here the whole time?” asked Trevelyan.

Some of Dorian’s composure returned to him. “Do I look like a nursemaid to you? I had to visit your library six times to get books. Have I told you lately what a sham your section on necromantic methodology is?”

“I’ll take it under consideration,” murmured Trevelyan. Dorian sat down on the edge of the bed beside him, and the shifting of the mattress triggered a memory. “Did you argue with Cullen?”

Dorian tensed. He toyed with a thread on the edge of the quilt. “The Commander and I had some disagreements, yes. They’ve since been smoothed out.”

“I remember that you blew up at him,” said Trevelyan.

“He was not keen on letting me stay,” said Dorian, with real bitterness. “Apparently, one of the Chantry mothers sent to pray over you ran and told him I was disturbing your rest. I told her that the only thing disturbing your rest was her incessant tongue-wagging, and that got me thrown out. I raged outside for a bit, broke one of your soldier’s noses, set an Orlesian's pants on fire, etc. Then I came back here. All in all, it was a colorful afternoon.”

“You said I was yours.”

Dorian’s face softened, and he seemed to Trevelyan then to be very young. There was something fearful in his eyes, as if he had been dreading this moment.

“You heard that, did you?” asked Dorian.

“I was a bit delirious, but yes, I heard.”

Dorian looked so lost that Trevelyn wished he could sit up and hold him in his arms. As it was, he had to settle for sitting up on one elbow.

“I realize that you and I have not….” said Dorian. “That we have never officially…”

Trevelyan felt a pang. He recognized that doubt as his own.

“Dorian, you do know I’m serious about you, right?”

Dorian looked away, and Trevelyan took his hand.

“I think of you as, I don’t know,” said Trevelyan. “I don’t really know what to call you. You’re the person I want to be with, for however long you’ll have me. I know things have been moving fast between us, and I think that scared me a bit, but I hope you feel the same way.”

“Men don’t talk about such things in Tevinter,” said Dorian, in that same lost voice.

“Then it’s a good thing we’re not in Tevinter,” said Trevelyan.

Dorian leaned in and kissed him. A second later they came away gagging. Both of their breaths were rancid.

“Not how I pictured us having this conversation.” Dorian scratched his tongue on his teeth. “In my fantasies it involved bon bons and roses.”

“That can be arranged, when my guts decide not to fall out.” He paused. “So what do I call you?”

“Paramour in court, lover when you want to scandalize, beloved when you really want to scandalize, and when we’re alone…” said Dorian, with heavy consideration. He finally leaned back in, kissing Trevelyan’s brow this time. “I’m yours.”

Trevelyan shut his eyes. He could work with that.

“But heed though,” said Dorian. “When you’re well again, and these sheets have been washed, I’m going to ravish you until this bed breaks.”

“Promises, promises," said Trevelyan, and made a note never to tell Sera how right she was. 


End file.
